Federal agency / VA
Department of Veterans Affairs
- Canonical ID
- usaspending-agency:036
- Fiscal year
- FY2026
- Abbreviation
- VA
- Budget justification
- Published ↗
Department of Veterans Affairs had $525.4B in budget authority for FY2026, the 6th largest of 111 top-tier agencies, and has obligated $333.9B of it so far.
FY2026 finances
Budget authority is what Congress made available; obligations are what has been committed; outlays are cash that has actually left the Treasury. The three are routinely confused and are kept apart here.
Budget authority
$525.4B
Obligated
$333.9B
Outlays
$326.2B
Share of federal budget
3.27%
Obligated 63.6% of available budget authority. Early in a fiscal year a low ratio is normal, not a sign of underspending — this figure means little without knowing which quarter it is.
How these figures are defined
Budget authority
Total budget authority available to the agency in the current fiscal year — what Congress has made available to spend, not what has been spent. Compare against obligations to see how much of it has actually been committed.
Obligated
Money the agency has legally committed this fiscal year through contracts, grants and other awards. An obligation is a promise to pay; the cash may leave the Treasury in a later year.
Outlays
Cash that has actually left the Treasury this fiscal year. Outlays lag obligations, sometimes by years, so a low ratio is normal early in a fiscal year rather than a sign of underspending.
Share of federal budget
This agency's budget authority as a share of all federal budget authority. USAspending reports it as a fraction; it is multiplied by 100 here and stored as a percentage, which is the only arithmetic applied to it.
Agencies of comparable size
Ranked 6th of 111 by budget authority. The five agencies either side are shown, because a bar chart against the Treasury's $4.5 trillion would render most agencies as a line one pixel wide.
- 1Department of the Treasury$4.51T
- 2Department of Health and Human Services$3.44T
- 3Department of Defense$2.58T
- 4Social Security Administration$1.42T
- 5Department of Homeland Security$641.7B
- 6Department of Veterans Affairs$525.4B
- 7Department of Agriculture$477.3B
- 8Office of Personnel Management$386.3B
- 9Department of Housing and Urban Development$338.8B
- 10Department of Transportation$302.6B
- 11Department of Education$169.0B
Sources & licence
Provenance
- U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Federal spending by agency and geography